Are you ready for a reset? Feeling you want to live a more balanced life but not knowing where to start?
We have something we’d like to share with you. It’s an initiative called Take the Jump. And we love it!
We love the fact that it has such a positive vibe – that it represents a Jump for Joy! Encouraging people to feel more connected and live in balance with the natural world, which is what the Triangle Garden’s ethos is all about.
Take the Jump feels like what we’ve all been waiting for – a clear set of actions we can all do that will make a serious dent in the nature and climate crisis. It’s not the whole solution but it’s a way forward for individual change based on scientific evidence.
But what we love most about it is its positivity! You can’t motivate people to move towards something unless they can visualise it being better. And Take the Jump does just that.
By talking about ‘living in balance’ and ‘less stuff, more joy!’ it builds on the lessons learnt from lockdown about what is really important to us. Community, caring, creativity, connection and contentment rather than consumption and clutter.
The six shifts it advocates are disarmingly simple and make total sense. That’s not to say they’re necessarily easy. But these are shifts that everyone can try and that’s where the emphasis is – on trying. And trying in collaboration with others for mutual support and ideas. Changing habits can be hard but doing it together helps keep up the momentum.
We also love the five foundations that underpin the initiative. In particular the emphasis on no more ‘us and them’ – no shaming – and ‘same access, different responsibility’. The six shifts are accessible to everyone regardless of social circumstances, but there is a clear recognition that those with a higher personal impact have more responsibility to change.
But this isn’t just about personal change – one of the six shifts is ‘change the system’. This might mean changing your bank account, pension, insurance provider or energy supplier to an ethical non-fossil fuel one, joining a climate action group, writing to your MP, going on a protest, taking action within your community. Evidence shows that all these things add up to a big message to power holders that funding fossil fuels is socially unacceptable and that we, the public are ready for change.
Over the next few months we’ll be looking at each of the six shifts in turn and thinking about what changes we could make to our lives to bring them more into balance with the natural world.
The first is ‘eat green’ but although its Veganuary this month, we suggest taking a step by step approach that you can experiment with, and build into your lifestyle across the year. Read our next blog and find out how you can start to ‘Take the Jump’!
This blog post is based on one written by Vicky Wyer for What if…? Craftivists